Don’t kill gran with the virus, youngsters told
THE Health Secretary has issued a blunt warning to young people flouting social distancing rules: “Don’t kill your gran”.
Matt Hancock revealed under- 25s were fuelling a rise in coronavirus cases and called for everyone to play their part to prevent a second wave.
He said: “The question is, how much are you willing to risk the lives of yourself and others by breaking the social distancing rules?
“Don’t kill your gran by catching coronavirus and then passing it on. You can pass it on before you have had any symptoms at all.”
Deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van- Tam said: “People have relaxed too much. If you look further into the European Union you can see that where case numbers rise initially in the younger parts of the population they do, in turn, filter through and start to give elevated rates of disease and hospital admissions in the older age groups.
Affluent
“If people don’t start to take this seriously again, then there is a risk that that’s where we end up.”
Mr Hancock was as also keen to dispel the belief elief that the rises were ere mainly a problem m for poorer areas.
He said: “Over the summer we had particular problems in some of the areas that are the most t deprived, but the he increase we have seen een in the last few days ays is more broadly spread. d.
“It’s actually among more affluent younger people where we have seen the rise.”
Alarm was sparked on Sunday, when almost 3,000 people tested positive in 24 hours. A further 2,948 cases were confirmed yesterday, along with three deaths from Covid- 19. The figure was more than double the 1,408 cases rec recorded last Monday. The surge in cases has been largely amo among under25s, particularly those aged 17 to 21, Mr Hancock said. Yet he revealed mass testing could see people given a 24- hour pass to mix in close quarters again by Christmas.
Asked whether people would be able to see pantomimes in theatres this winter, Mr Hancock told LBC radio the “holy grail” would be a “pregnancy- style” test that people could take in the morning to check they were not infectious that day.
He explained: “There’s a new technology to get a test where you can have the turnaround essentially on the spot.
“That is what we’re working on, that is the hope, and I also hope that will allow us to have a merry Christmas.”
He added: “Both mass testing and the vaccine are essentially technologies that can help us to escape from the social distancing that right now is absolutely necessarily.
“This is what gets me out of bed in the morning, because these are the ways that we get through this. And then we get back to recovery – to economic recovery and to flourishing as a nation once again.”
Meanwhile, a study in the British Journal of General Practice suggested that suspected infections at the peak of the pandemic were three times higher than the official number of confirmed cases.